Website Creation & Google Analytics
Website : Some Key Elements
What is a Website & why is it needed?
Website is your Online Store that aids you in enhancing various aspects of your business. It is the face of your online presence.
Having a good website is the starting point of conducting your business as it can aid you to handle all aspects including
- Recruiting the right people – HR (Human Resources)
- Improving the awareness – Pre sales / Marketing
- Engaging with your potential customers – Sales
- Managing your customers and making them brand ambassadors – CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
- Product / Service enhancement – Production department
- Improving Personal Branding
You also need a website as it is potentially a versatile place that can showcase any kind of business that you might want to display
Some examples
- Digital Coaching – arvindsri.com
- Career Development – ignitedway.com
- Health Management – healthybeing.org
There are four ways in which you can develop your website. The decision can be made based on your requirement and budget
Website Components
As a Digital Marketer (DM), it is recommended that you choose the last option – Open Source CMS. The key reasons for this is that, it is one of the low cost options and does not need a big team to support it. Even freelancers can aid you
There are two main frameworks that define a website
- Front end – Domain (.com / .org /. Net)
- Back end – Hosting server
There are lot of elements towards development and maintenance of sites. But as person who is in-charge of DM activities, you need to look at your website as SHOP where customers are coming to BUY your product / service
You definitely need to provide a good experience and hence these directions are critical, but do not get enamored by it, as your focus should be to drive Traffic (Foot falls)
That’s going to determine your success and failure, but from a information stand-point, it is important for you to understand a few things when it comes to setting up your website
Some key elements while developing the front end and back end are
- Choosing a proper
- Domain Server. Some top names here are GoDaddy & Name Cheap
- Hosting Server: Some top names are Host Gator & Blue Host
- Using WP (Word Press) as the Content Management System (CMS)
- Finding a good Theme that goes well with WP like Astra or WP Ocean
- Good page builder like Elementor
- Good Up-time for the server – More than 99.99: It is the time taken to retrieve data from the server to be displayed on your site
Most of the tools listed above have a Freemium model of pricing i.e. Free for certain aspects / Time and then has a payment to be made
Once the website is developed then you need to focus on generating organic and paid traffic (Covered in other blogs)
Some of the key features that you need to keep in mind while creating a website is that the site should be user friendly; displays brand Image and logo; has testimonials or portfolio page; has social media links; contact details; should be easy to navigate; should have a server that has a fast loading
Some points
- Word Press is the best CMS is the world as 35% of websites in the world use this
- Blogging is better than static websites as you can make a revenue out of it
- Domain name should be brandable
- Keyword based domain name – .com & < 10 characters
- Country specific is ok, if you don’t want to go international
- Domain names provider – Needs to have good customer support
- You can change your registrar – From GoDaddy to HostGator (for e
- Always have domain name and hosting separately
- Page load speed should be key factor while deciding the hosting
- Linking domain and hosting is like linking Name and phone number
- Name server – A name server is a specialized server on the Internet that handles queries or questions from your local computer, about the location of a domain name’s various services
- cPanel – Server management software – cPanel is an online Linux-based web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site to the website owner or the “end user”
Website : Design & Development
A Primer on WP (Word press)
- WordPress uses a concept of Roles, designed to give the site owner the ability to control what users can and cannot do within the site.
- A site owner can manage the user access to such tasks as writing and editing posts, creating Pages, defining links, creating categories, moderating comments, managing plugins, managing themes, and managing other users, by assigning a specific role to each of the users.
- WordPress has six pre-defined roles:
- Super Admin, Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber.
- Each role is allowed to perform a set of tasks called Capabilities. There are many capabilities including “publish_posts”, “moderate comments”, and “edit_users”.
- The Super Admin role allows a user to perform all possible capabilities. Each of the other roles has a decreasing number of allowed capabilities. For instance, the Subscriber role has just the “read” capability. One particular role should not be considered to be senior to another role. Rather, consider that roles define the user’s responsibilities within the site.
Summary of Roles
- Super Admin – somebody with access to the site network administration features and all other features. See the create a network
- Administrator – somebody who has access to all the administration features within a single site.
- Editor – somebody who can publish and manage posts including the posts of other users.
- Author – somebody who can publish and manage their own posts.
- Contributor – somebody who can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them.
- Subscriber – somebody who can only manage their profile.
Upon installing WordPress, an Administrator account is automatically created.
Some WP Definitions
- Tag is one of the pre-defined taxonomy in WordPress. Users can add tags to their WordPress posts along with categories. However, while a category may cover a broad range of topics, tags are smaller in scope and focused to specific topics. Think of them as keywords used for topics discussed in a particular post.
- Portfolios. If you’re hoping to use your WordPress.com site to show off your portfolio separate from your blog posts and pages, the Portfolio content type will let you manage all your portfolio projects in one place. It also gives you a number of different ways to display them on your site.
- As WordPress solutions provider, you’ll come across clients who haven’t used WordPress before, and they are not familiar with HTML, CSS, or WordPress terminology. By creating a custom dashboard for clients, you can provide them with a lean WordPress interface and improved usability.
- Testimonial Rotator. Testimonial Rotator is an easy to use WordPress testimonials plugin. It allows you create a testimonial carousel and add rotating testimonials anywhere on your website. You can also create multiple rotators and manually enter customer information such as feedback, job title, and photo
- Comments provide your website’s visitors a platform to communicate with you and other readers. It allows them to add their input on the topic, ask questions, and provide feedback. They allow for community interaction around your content. WordPress comes with a comment management system of its own.
- Tools is a menu tab in the WordPress admin sidebar. It contains tools to perform some non-routine management tasks. … The first is “Available Tools”. Under this section there is a bookmarklet called Press This that allows quick posting and publishing by means of using a browser favorite button
Website : Having Global Impact
DIGITAL ANALYTICS – AN OVERVIEW
Digital Analytics by Avinash Kaushik
Digital analytics is the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your business and the competition to drive a continual improvement of the online experience that your customers and potential customers have which translates to your desired outcomes (both online and offline)
Qualitative & Quantitative Data
- Qualitative data is information about qualities; information that can’t actually be measured. E.g. softness of skin, grace of running, color of eyes etc.
- Quantitative data is information about quantities; that is, information that can be measured and written down with numbers. E.g. Height, shoe size, length of fingernails etc.
Continual Improvement
- A continual improvement process, also often called a continuous improvement process (abbreviated as CIP or CI), is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek incremental improvement over time or breakthrough improvement all at once.
Online Experience
- Mobile is becoming a focal point as companies invest more time in understanding the multichannel customer experience
- More companies are looking at why things are happening, not just what is happening
- Social listening tools and analysis of this data are playing a more important role
- Customer behavior data related to conversion is seen as most valuable
Potential Customers
- Not everyone who hasn’t yet purchased your products or services is a Potential Customer for an organization’s products and/or services.
- They may be perfect for some kinds of people, completely inappropriate for other kinds and average for others. The definition according to Dictionary.com for Potential is capable of being or becoming.
- Therefore, a Potential Customer is someone who is capable of becoming a purchaser of product and/or services from an organization. By understanding your Potential Customers, those most likely to buy from your organization, you can target your Communication Material accordingly.
- The key group of Potential Customers, is known as your Target Audience, the group of people or organizations who are most likely to buy from your company.
Desired Outcomes
- When your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with your company, that is customer success. The process used to proactively ensure your customers achieve their – or to orchestrate – Desired Outcome, is what we call Customer Success Management.
NEED FOR DIGITAL ANALYTICS
Need to measure data
- Unscientific Solution – Go the HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) way; What data to measure? How to classify data? How to maintain sanity? What do you measure and monitor?
DIGITAL ANALYTICS PROCESS
- Define Goals: Why is this website made? What do we want our customers to do? What is our complete sales process/funnel like? Where does the website fit in this? What is the priority in multiple goals?
- Build KPIs: Simple; Relevant; Periodic; Actionable
- Collect Data: Are we collecting the right data? Is the data correct? Are we collecting all the data we need?
- Analyze Data: Who to compare the data with? Data can be interpreted in different ways – e.g., Pages/Visit; It’s not always about statistical analyses – Data can be inspected; Visualizations to help analyze data
- Test Alternatives: Testing can be done on any interface, not just the campaign landing pages; Prioritize your testing; Share results with everyone
- Implement: Get top management support; Start with small steps; Be flexible and keep options open
Website : An Omni Channel Platform
SETTING UP GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Some Definitions
- Source: Origin of traffic, such as a search engine (E.g. google) or a domain (example.com).
- Medium: Category of the source, E.g. organic search (organic), cost-per-click (CPC), paid search, web referral (referral).
- Page Value: Is the average value for a page that a user visited before landing on the goal page or completing an Ecommerce transaction (or both). This value is intended to give you an idea of which page in your site contributed more to your site’s revenue.
- Frequency: It refers to the number of users who visited your website within the last 1 to 30 days in the selected time period.
- Understanding the point at which users tend to disengage (for example, initiate fewer sessions, view fewer pages, generate less revenue) can help you identify two things:
- Common points of attrition that might be easily remedied
- The rate at which you need to acquire new users to compensate for unavoidable attrition
- Benchmarking: Allows organizations to compare their performance across a number of metrics to their peers.
- Peers can be defined by some combination of: Industry category 1,600 categories helpfully broken down from top level to two levels below that; Geographic market 1,250 countries and regions or states (U.S.); Sessions per day — 7 buckets
- Multi-Channel Funnels reports: Are generated from conversion paths: the sequences of interactions (e.g. clicks/referrals from channels) that led up to each conversion and transaction. The conversion paths are collected via the Google Analytics cookie which records interactions by the same browser and machine.
- Assisted conversions: Are the interactions that a customer has with a website leading up to a conversion, but not the final interaction.
- Time Lag report: Shows how many conversions resulted from conversion paths that were 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12+ days long. This can give you insight into the length of your online sales cycle.
- Path Length: Can give you insight into the length of your online sales cycle. The Path Length report shows how many conversions resulted from conversion paths that contained 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12+ channel interactions.
- Understanding the point at which users tend to disengage (for example, initiate fewer sessions, view fewer pages, generate less revenue) can help you identify two things:
Admin – Key Points
- Create accounts to organize or separate data. When you create an account, you also automatically create a property and a view to that account. These levels create the structure within Analytics that allow you to collect and analyze data. In Google Analytics, a property is a website, mobile application, or blog, etc., that is associated with a unique tracking ID.
- A Google Analytics account can contain one or more properties. A reporting view is the level in an Analytics account where you can access reports and analysis tools. Analytics automatically creates one unfiltered view for every property in your account, but you can set up multiple views on a single property.
- Each Analytics account can have up to 50 properties and each property can have up to 25 views
Do check out our other blogs…